John Yembrick: The Innovation 50

John Yembrick left a director position at the space agency’s Ames Research Center to lead NASA’s social media efforts, and the passionate digital communications believer never looked back. He was pegged for the role as one of the early advocates of social media within the agency, and he’s leveraged emerging technologies to help advance NASA’s outreach activities and reach new audiences (those 10 million Facebook fans can’t all be physicists). One of his big ideas includes creating NASA Socials (formerly known as NASA Tweetups), which take the online engagement offline by providing active social media users with an in-person experience that goes behind the scenes. A day in Yembrick’s life includes leading a team of social media specialists across 10 NASA field centers and overseeing almost 500 social media accounts.

San Francisco-based Yembrick previously worked in a number of communications roles at NASA, including public affairs and space operations. Before that, Yembrick worked for the US Justice Department, leading communications for the US Attorney’s Office in Texas.